The third generation partnership project (3GPP) and 3GPP2 are currently considering a long term evolution (LTE) of the universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) terrestrial radio access (UTRA). Currently, SC-FDMA has been adopted for the uplink air interface of the evolved UTRA.
In an SC-FDMA system, a plurality of orthogonal subcarriers are transmitted simultaneously. The subcarriers are divided into a plurality of subcarrier blocks, (also known as resource blocks (RBs)). A block of subcarriers is a basic resource unit in an SC-FDMA system. The subcarrier block may be either a localized subcarrier block or a distributed subcarrier block. The localized subcarrier block is a set of consecutive subcarriers and the distributed subcarrier block is a set of equally spaced non-consecutive subcarriers.
FIG. 1 illustrates two localized subcarrier blocks, each comprising four consecutive subcarriers. The localized subcarrier block is a basic scheduling unit for uplink transmissions in a localized-mode SC-FDMA system. FIG. 2 illustrates two distributed subcarrier blocks. In this example, the distributed subcarrier block 1 includes subcarriers 1, 5 and 9, and the distributed subcarrier block 2 includes subcarriers 3, 7 and 11. The distributed subcarrier block is a basic scheduling unit for uplink transmissions in a distributed-mode SC-FDMA system. Depending on a data rate or a buffer status, a Node-B assigns at least one subcarrier block for uplink transmissions for a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU).
When a WTRU transitions from an idle mode to a connected mode, the WTRU needs to communicate with a base station (or a network) using a RACH, which is a contention-based channel. The RACH transmissions of the WTRU have two parts: a preamble part and a message part. In a conventional wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) system, (up to Release 6), a transmit power ramping up scheme is used for accessing the RACH. The WTRU starts transmission of a preamble to a base station with a very low (or minimum) initial transmit power level. If the preamble is successfully decoded by the base station, the base station sends a positive acknowledgement (ACK) to the WTRU via an acquisition indicator channel (AICH). If the base station fails to decode the preamble, the base station sends a negative acknowledgement (NACK). When the WTRU receives a NACK or no response, the WTRU retransmits the preamble while ramping up the transmit power level in subsequent transmission time intervals (TTIs).
This power ramp up process which starts with a low or minimum power causes an extra delay for uplink random access which is undesirable.